The Sustainable Development Goals have been signed. Governments from all over the world have committed themselves to 17 ambitious goals that are designed to end poverty, protect the planet, and ensure prosperity for all. A question that requires an answer: how are we going to finance this?

During the International Conference on Financing for Development governments from all over the world came up with a package of more than 100 concrete measures that draw upon all sources of finance, technology, innovation and trade that is supposed to support the implementation the Sustainable Development Goals. "Financing needs for sustainable development are high, but the challenges are surmountable," said UN secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the opening of the Conference.The world has all the resources and expertise it needs to reach those goals, it just has to organize these differently though. With our Financing Sanitation Paper Series we hope to share our expertise on how we can finance Sustainable Development Goal 6: Ensure Access to Water and Sanitation for all.

The Financing Sanitation Paper Series is a unique collection of six articles about different aspects of sustainable financing of sanitation (in emerging markets) - from financial inclusion to private funding and from micro insurance to climate financing.

From November 13 on we will publish a new article every three weeks:
1. An overview of the financial instruments for sanitation used in FINISH programmes in India and Kenya
2. The essence of public and private funding for sanitation
3. Micro insurance and sanitation - bringing elusive allies together
4. Financial inclusion and sanitation from the beneficiary point of view
5. Comparative costing of sanitation - from the bill of quantities to the Chinese Motorcycle Index
6. Sanitation and climate financing

To be able to finance sanitation sustainably, we need to work together, build innovative partnerships and share knowledge. We have developed the Financing Sanitation Paper Series for this specific reason, to share our experiences on financing sanitation and to start an exciting discussion on this very important topic.